Evan's bookshelf: all en-US Mon, 31 Aug 2020 00:40:30 -0700 60 Evan's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Black Mischief 30934 320 Evelyn Waugh 0316917338 Evan 5 3.74 1932 Black Mischief
author: Evelyn Waugh
name: Evan
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1932
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism (New Atlantis Books)]]> 12435498
Merchants of Despair traces the pedigree of this ideology and exposes its pernicious consequences in startling and horrifying detail. The book names the chief prophets and promoters of antihumanism over the last two centuries, from Thomas Malthus through Paul Ehrlich and Al Gore. It exposes the worst crimes perpetrated by the antihumanist movement, including eugenics campaigns in the United States and genocidal anti-development and population-control programs around the world.

Combining riveting tales from history with powerful policy arguments, Merchants of Despair provides scientific refutations to all of antihumanism’s major pseudo-scientific claims, including its modern tirades against nuclear power, pesticides, population growth, biotech foods, resource depletion, and industrial development.]]> 328 Robert Zubrin 1594034761 Evan 0 to-read 4.10 2011 Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism (New Atlantis Books)
author: Robert Zubrin
name: Evan
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/04/30
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]]> Scum of the Earth 552008 Darkness at Noon. After retreating to Paris he was imprisoned by the French as an undesirable alien even though he had been a respected crusader against fascism. Only luck and his passionate energy allowed him to escape the fate of many of the innocent refugees, who were handed over to the Nazis for torture and often execution.

Scum of the Earth is more than the story of Koestler's survival. His shrewd observation of the collapse of the French determination to resist during the summer of 1940 is an illustration of what happens when a nation loses its honour and its pride.

--From the 2006 paperback edition.]]> 253 Arthur Koestler 0907871496 Evan 5 4.29 1941 Scum of the Earth
author: Arthur Koestler
name: Evan
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1941
rating: 5
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]]> Propaganda 19220394 Noam Chomsky

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.� � Edward Bernays

A seminal and controversial figure in the history of political thought and public relations, Edward Bernays (1891�1995), pioneered the scientific technique of shaping and manipulating public opinion, which he famously dubbed “engineering of consent.� During World War I, he was an integral part of the U.S. Committee on Public Information (CPI), a powerful propaganda apparatus that was mobilized to package, advertise and sell the war to the American people as one that would “Make the World Safe for Democracy.� The CPI would become the blueprint in which marketing strategies for future wars would be based upon.

Bernays applied the techniques he had learned in the CPI and, incorporating some of the ideas of Walter Lipmann, as well as his uncle, Sigmund Freud, became an outspoken proponent of propaganda as a tool for democratic and corporate manipulation of the population. His 1928 bombshell Propaganda lays out his eerily prescient vision for using propaganda to regiment the collective mind in a variety of areas, including government, politics, art, science and education. To read this book today is to frightfully comprehend what our contemporary institutions of government and business have become in regards to organized manipulation of the masses.]]> 128 Edward L. Bernays Evan 5 3.88 1928 Propaganda
author: Edward L. Bernays
name: Evan
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1928
rating: 5
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]]> The Men Who Stare at Goats 6903597 259 Jon Ronson 1439181772 Evan 5 3.39 2004 The Men Who Stare at Goats
author: Jon Ronson
name: Evan
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2004
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked]]> 30962055
In this revolutionary book, Adam Alter, a professor of psychology and marketing at NYU, tracks the rise of behavioral addiction, and explains why so many of today's products are irresistible. Though these miraculous products melt the miles that separate people across the globe, their extraordinary and sometimes damaging magnetism is no accident. The companies that design these products tweak them over time until they become almost impossible to resist.

By reverse engineering behavioral addiction, Alter explains how we can harness addictive products for the good—to improve how we communicate with each other, spend and save our money, and set boundaries between work and play—and how we can mitigate their most damaging effects on our well-being, and the health and happiness of our children.]]> 368 Adam Alter 1594206643 Evan 5 3.83 2017 Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked
author: Adam Alter
name: Evan
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2017
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Seven League Boots: Adventures Across the World from Arabia to Abyssinia (Tauris Parke Paperbacks)]]> 13167831 328 Richard Halliburton 1780761384 Evan 5 4.22 1935 Seven League Boots: Adventures Across the World from Arabia to Abyssinia (Tauris Parke Paperbacks)
author: Richard Halliburton
name: Evan
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1935
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD and the Sixties Rebellion]]> 260352 Acid Dreams is the complete social history of LSD and the counterculture it helped to define in the sixties. Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain's exhaustively researched and astonishing account—part of it gleaned from secret government files—tells how the CIA became obsessed with LSD as an espionage weapon during the early 1950s and launched a massive covert research program, in which countless unwitting citizens were used as guinea pigs. Though the CIA was intent on keeping the drug to itself, it ultimately couldn't prevent it from spreading into the popular culture; here LSD had a profound impact and helped spawn a political and social upheaval that changed the face of America. From the clandestine operations of the government to the escapades of Timothy Leary, Abbie Hoffman, Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, Allen Ginsberg, and many others, Acid Dreams provides an important and entertaining account that goes to the heart of a turbulent period in our history.

Also called: Acid Dreams. The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, The Sixties, and Beyond]]> 384 Martin A. Lee 0802130623 Evan 5 4.12 1985 Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD and the Sixties Rebellion
author: Martin A. Lee
name: Evan
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1985
rating: 5
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]]> New York in the Forties 79956 Included is almost every aspect of city life from the eerie shots of New York during the "dimout" to the bright lights of 42nd Street. You'll see buildings that look much the same and sights that have vastly changed. The Flatiron Building, Rockefeller Center, the Singer Building, tattoo parlors, clean city streets, 42nd Street with no pornographic movies. You'll see the Normandie in her heyday, the Queen Mary , and New York as one of the greatest port towns with 771 miles of bustling waterfront activity. You'll see Harlem nightclub at 135th Street, the Louis-Walcott fight at Madison Square Garden, the glittering audience at the old Met; Fifth Avenue during the blizzard of '47; horse-drawn vehicles, the els, the last decade of the street car; the Lower East Side poultry markets and frenzied activity at the Fulton Fish Market; Bowery flophouses; the skyscraper race; incredible views made of the stair-step constructions of skyscrapers; the Brooklyn Bridge, Chinatown, Coney Island, Yorkville, and more.
One hundred and sixty two photographs show a multitude of facets of New York in the 1940s, the decade during which the city flourished and grew with incredible activity. The interesting, factual captions by John von Hartz convey a clear picture of what living in New York was like, giving us a background and explaining the problems, excitement, and changes people faced.
Andreas Feininger brings to this volume an enormous reputation in the field of photography. A former staff photographer of Life magazine, author of several photography texts, and compiler of volumes of his own photographs, Mr. Feininger has personally supervised the publication of this collection of his famous photographs of New York City. While some of these photos have been seen in other books, never before have so many of them been made available in one volume.]]> 178 John Von Hartz 0486235858 Evan 5 4.45 1978 New York in the Forties
author: John Von Hartz
name: Evan
average rating: 4.45
book published: 1978
rating: 5
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]]> Unassigned Territory 32201848 Lay preacher Obadiah Wheeler is responsible for conducting a group of missionaries into "unassigned territory," a stretch of Nevada wilderness open to evangelistic efforts. Obadiah's faith is shaky at best and no match for the tempting charms of the co-proprietor of a desert museum, raven-haired beauty Delandra Hummer. Together the two set off into the vast emptiness of the Mojave in search of a buyer for the museum's prize exhibit, an extraterrestrial relic. Their hilarious road trip � punctuated by encounters with UFO cults, wild rednecks, and hippie burnouts � throbs with violence and madness as well as the possibility of spiritual enlightenment. This "desert noir" by National Book Award nominee Kem Nunn was recognized as a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice; the author has also written for and produced numerous TV projects, among them John from Cincinnati , Deadwood , and Sons of Anarchy .]]> 320 Kem Nunn 0486815706 Evan 5 2.83 1987 Unassigned Territory
author: Kem Nunn
name: Evan
average rating: 2.83
book published: 1987
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[How to Murder Your Life: A Memoir]]> 34467017 The Telegraph), a candid and darkly humorous memoir of prescription drug addiction and self-sabotage, set in the glamorous world of fashion magazines and downtown nightclubs.

At twenty-six, Cat Marnell was an associate beauty editor at Lucky, one of the top fashion magazines in America—and that’s all most people knew about her. But she hid a secret life. She was a prescription drug addict. She was also a “doctor shopper� who manipulated Upper East Side psychiatrists for pills, pills, and more pills; a lonely bulimic who spent hundreds of dollars a week on binge foods; a promiscuous party girl who danced barefoot on banquets; a weepy and hallucination-prone insomniac who would take anything�anything—to sleep.

This is a tale of self-loathing, self-sabotage, and yes, self-tanner. It begins at a posh New England prep school—and with a prescription for Attention Deficit Disorder medication Ritalin. It continues to New York, where we follow Marnell’s amphetamine-fueled rise from intern to editor through the beauty departments of NYLON, Teen Vogue, Glamour, and Lucky. We see her fight between ambition and addiction and how, inevitably, her disease threatens everything she worked so hard to achieve.

From the Condé Nast building (where she rides the elevator alongside Anna Wintour) to seedy nightclubs, from doctors� offices and mental hospitals, Marnell shows—like no one else can—what it is like to live in the wild, chaotic, often sinister world of a young female addict who can’t say no.

Combining lightning-rod subject matter and bold literary aspirations, How to Murder Your Life is mesmerizing, revelatory, and necessary.]]> 384 Cat Marnell 1476752397 Evan 5 4.06 2017 How to Murder Your Life: A Memoir
author: Cat Marnell
name: Evan
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2017
rating: 5
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]]> Confessions 361947 346 Augustine of Hippo 014044114X Evan 5 3.99 400 Confessions
author: Augustine of Hippo
name: Evan
average rating: 3.99
book published: 400
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[The Monkey Wrench Gang (Monkey Wrench Gang, #1)]]> 99208 The Monkey Wrench Gang, his 1975 novel, a "comic extravaganza." Some readers have remarked that the book is more a comic book than a real novel, and it's true that reading this incendiary call to protect the American wilderness requires more than a little of the old willing suspension of disbelief.

The story centers on Vietnam veteran George Washington Hayduke III, who returns to the desert to find his beloved canyons and rivers threatened by industrial development. On a rafting trip down the Colorado River, Hayduke joins forces with feminist saboteur Bonnie Abbzug, wilderness guide Seldom Seen Smith, and billboard torcher Doc Sarvis, M.D., and together they wander off to wage war on the big yellow machines, on dam builders and road builders and strip miners. As they do, his characters voice Abbey's concerns about wilderness preservation ("Hell of a place to lose a cow," Smith thinks to himself while roaming through the canyonlands of southern Utah. "Hell of a place to lose your heart. Hell of a place... to lose. Period").

Moving from one improbable situation to the next, packing more adventure into the space of a few weeks than most real people do in a lifetime, the motley gang puts fear into the hearts of their enemies, laughing all the while. It's comic, yes, and required reading for anyone who has come to love the desert.]]> 421 Edward Abbey 0061129763 Evan 5 4.09 1975 The Monkey Wrench Gang (Monkey Wrench Gang, #1)
author: Edward Abbey
name: Evan
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1975
rating: 5
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]]> Naked Soul of Iceberg Slim 16674400
While bringing brutal and difficult-to-swallow tales from the underground, this book exposes the author’s inner workings unlike any of Iceberg Slim’s other works. His tough exterior evolves into a straight-out, heartfelt confession.

As if Iceberg Slim’s captivating, rough words weren’t enough to evoke the essence of this time in his life—the L.A. underground of the 1960s—each character carries their own baggage, struggle, and influence on Iceberg’s vision of the world.

These tales serve as a chilling reminder that we are all still inmates of one prison or another, and the time to break free has arrived.]]> 176 Iceberg Slim 085786968X Evan 5 4.27 1971 Naked Soul of Iceberg Slim
author: Iceberg Slim
name: Evan
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1971
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory]]> 20483049 The United States of Paranoia presents a comprehensive history of conspiracy theories in American culture and politics, from the colonial era to the War on Terror.

The fear of intrigue and subversion doesn’t exist only on the fringes of society, but has always been part of our national identity. When such tales takes hold, Walker argues, they reflect the anxieties and experiences of the people who believe them, even if they say nothing true about the objects of the theories themselves.

With intensive research and a deadpan sense of humor, Jesse Walker’s The United States of Paranoia combines the rigor of real history with the punch of pulp fiction.

This edition includes primary-source documentation in the form of archival photographs, cartoons, and film stills selected by the author.]]> 446 Jesse Walker 0062135562 Evan 5 3.54 2012 The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory
author: Jesse Walker
name: Evan
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2012
rating: 5
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]]> Permanent Midnight 95377 L.A. Style to the Village Voice, from Esquire to Hustler. He penned scripts for twisted cult classics like Cafe Flesh and Dr. Caligari. He banged out shows for TV mega-hits like Moonlighting, Twin Peaks, and thirtysomething. But even when Jerry Stahl was making five grand a week, he was shooting six. Careening from his luxury home to L.A.'s more hellacious neighborhoods, he financed a heroin habit that brought on the soothing hiss of oblivion, while it stole his health and smashed his career. Until in a private apocalypse straight out of Day of the Locust, Jerry Stahl kicked smack and emerged clean.

A searing, strung-out confessional in the lineage of Lenny Bruce, William S. Burroughs, and Hubert Selby Jr., PERMANENT MIDNIGHT chronicles one man's slide into the opiated abyss and his claw-marked ascent back into the light--heralding the return of the Urban Hipster to contemporary literature, infused with savage humor and relentless intensity.]]> 371 Jerry Stahl 0976082209 Evan 5 3.94 2015 Permanent Midnight
author: Jerry Stahl
name: Evan
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2015
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Street Poison: The Biography of Iceberg Slim]]> 23615704
Literature professor Justin Gifford has been researching the life and work of Robert Beck for a decade, culminating inĚý Street Poison , a colorful and compassionate biography of one of the most complicated figures in twentieth-century literature. Drawing on a wealth of archival material—including FBI files, prison records, and interviews with Beck, his wife, and his daughters—Gifford explores the sexual trauma and racial violence Beck endured that led to his reinvention as Iceberg Slim, one of America's most infamous pimps of the 1940s and '50s. From pimping to penning his profoundly influential confessional autobiography,Ěý Pimp , to his involvement in radical politics, Gifford's biography illuminates the life and works of one of American literature's most unique renegades.]]> 265 Justin Gifford 0385538340 Evan 5 3.73 2015 Street Poison: The Biography of Iceberg Slim
author: Justin Gifford
name: Evan
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2015
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[David Copperfield (Penguin Clothbound Classics)]]> 26150737
This is the novel Dickens regarded as his "favourite child" and is considered his most autobiographical. As David recounts his experiences from childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist, Dickens draws openly and revealingly on his own life. Among the gloriously vivid cast of characters are Rosa Dartle, Dora, Steerforth, and the 'umble Uriah Heep, along with Mr. Micawber, a portrait of Dickens's own father that evokes a mixture of love, nostalgia, and guilt.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 1024 Charles Dickens 0241240360 Evan 5 4.27 1850 David Copperfield (Penguin Clothbound Classics)
author: Charles Dickens
name: Evan
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1850
rating: 5
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]]> Elvis 1274532 598 Albert Goldman 0070236577 Evan 5 3.79 1981 Elvis
author: Albert Goldman
name: Evan
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1981
rating: 5
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date added: 2019/04/24
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]]> <![CDATA[Dirty John and Other True Stories of Outlaws and Outsiders]]> 40680114 A collection of newspaper stories by award-winning Los Angeles Times reporter Christopher Goffard--including “Dirty John,� the basis for the hit podcast and the upcoming Bravo scripted series starring Connie Britton and Eric Bana.

Since its release in fall 2017, the “Dirty John� podcast--about a conman who terrorizes a Southern California family--has been downloaded more than 20 million times, and will soon premiere as a scripted drama on Bravo starring Connie Britton and Eric Bana. The story, which also ran as a print series in the Los Angeles Times, wasn’t unfamiliar terrain to its writer, Christopher Goffard. Over two decades at newspapers from Florida to California, Goffard has reported probingly on the shadowy, unseen corners of society. This book gathers together for the first time “Dirty John� and the rest of his very best work.

“The $40 Lawyer� provides an inside account of a young public defender’s rookie year in the legal trenches. “Framed� offers an unblinking chronicle of suburban mayhem (and is currently being developed by Netflix as a film starring Julia Roberts). A man wrongly imprisoned for rape, train-riding runaways in love, a Syrian mother forced to leave her children in order to save them, a boy who grows up to become a cop as a way of honoring his murdered sister, another boy who struggles with the knowledge that his father is on death row: these stories reveal the complexities of human nature, showing people at both their most courageous and their most flawed.

Goffard shared in the Los Angeles Times� Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2011 and has twice been a Pulitzer finalist for feature writing. This collection—a must-read for fans of both true-crime and first-rate narrative nonfiction—underscores his reputation as one of today’s most original journalistic voices.]]> 368 Christopher Goffard 1982113251 Evan 5 3.58 2018 Dirty John and Other True Stories of Outlaws and Outsiders
author: Christopher Goffard
name: Evan
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2018
rating: 5
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]]> All About Eggs 30984631
Eggs: star of the most important meal of the day, and, to hear billions of cooks and chefs tell it, quite possibly the world's most important food. Does that make Lucky Peach's All About Eggs the world's most important book? Probably yes. In essays, anecdotes, how-tos, and foolproof recipes, this egg-centric volume celebrates everything an egg can be and do. Whether illuminating the progress of an egg through a chicken, or teaching you how to poach the perfect egg, All About Eggs bursts with facts to deploy at your next cocktail party—then serves up a killer deviled egg recipe to serve while you’re doing it. All About Eggs is for anyone who has ever delighted in the pleasures of an omelet, marveled at the snowflake patterns on a century egg, or longed to make a sky-high soufflé.]]> 256 Rachel Khong 0804187754 Evan 5 4.12 All About Eggs
author: Rachel Khong
name: Evan
average rating: 4.12
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rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Journey to the End of the Night]]> 20807519
CĂ©line’s masterpiece—colloquial, polemic, hyper realistic—boils over with bitter humor and revulsion at society’s idiocy and ĚýJourney to the End of the NightĚýis a literary symphony of cruelty and violence that hurtles through the improbable travels of the petit bourgeois (and largely autobiographical) antihero, from the trenches of WWI, to the African jungle, to New York, to the Ford Factory in Detroit, and finally to life in Paris as a failed doctor. Ralph Manheim’s pitch-perfect translation captures CĂ©line’s savage energy, and a dynamic afterword by William T. Vollmann presents a fresh, furiously alive take on this astonishing novel.]]> 468 Louis-Ferdinand CĂ©line 0811223612 Evan 5 4.03 1932 Journey to the End of the Night
author: Louis-Ferdinand CĂ©line
name: Evan
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1932
rating: 5
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date added: 2019/04/24
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]]> Fat City 23995459 Fat City is a vivid novel of defiance and struggle, of the potent promise of the good life and the desperation and drink that waylay those whom it eludes. Stockton, California, is the setting: the Lido Gym, the Hotel Coma, Main Street lunchrooms and dark bars offer a temporary respite to the men and women whose back-breaking work in the fields barely allows them to make a living.
When two men meet in the gym—the ex-boxer Billy Tully and the novice Ernie Munger—their brief sparring session sets into motion their hidden fates, initiating young Munger into the company of men and luring Tully back into training. Fat City tells of their anxieties and hopes, their loves and losses, and the stubborn determination of their manager, Ruben Luna, who knows that even the most promising kid is likely to fall prey to some weakness. Then again, “There was always someone who wanted to fight.”]]> 191 Leonard Gardner 1590178920 Evan 5 4.10 1969 Fat City
author: Leonard Gardner
name: Evan
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1969
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business]]> 74034 184 Neil Postman 014303653X Evan 5 4.16 1985 Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
author: Neil Postman
name: Evan
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1985
rating: 5
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]]> To the Bridge 35884544 The case was closed, but for journalist Nancy Rommelmann, the mystery remained: What made a mother want to murder her own children?

On May 23, 2009, Amanda Stott-Smith drove to the middle of the Sellwood Bridge in Portland, Oregon, and dropped her two children into the Willamette River. Forty minutes later, rescuers found the body of four-year-old Eldon. Miraculously, his seven-year-old sister, Trinity, was saved. As the public cried out for blood, Amanda was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to thirty-five years in prison.

Embarking on a seven-year quest for the truth, Rommelmann traced the roots of Amanda’s fury and desperation through thousands of pages of records, withheld documents, meetings with lawyers and convicts, and interviews with friends and family who felt shocked, confused, and emotionally swindled by a woman whose entire life was now defined by an unspeakable crime. At the heart of that crime: a tempestuous marriage, a family on the fast track to self-destruction, and a myriad of secrets and lies as dark and turbulent as the Willamette River.

“In To the Bridge, Nancy Rommelmann takes what many consider the most unforgivable of crimes—a mother set on murdering her own children—and delivers something thoughtful and provocative: a deeply reported, sensitively told, all-too-relevant tragedy of addiction and codependency, toxic masculinity, and capricious justice. You won’t be able to look away—nor should any of us.� —Robert Kolker, New York Times bestselling author of Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery

“How do you understand the not understandable and forgive the unforgivable? So asks one of the characters in this clear-eyed investigation into something we all turn away from. To the Bridge is a tour de force of both journalism and compassion, in the lineage of such masterpieces as In Cold Blood and The Executioner’s Song. Word by word, sentence by sentence, Rommelmann’s writing is that good. And so is her heart.� —Nick Flynn, PEN/Martha Albrand Award–winning author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City]]> 303 Nancy Rommelmann 1542098416 Evan 5 3.38 2018 To the Bridge
author: Nancy Rommelmann
name: Evan
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2018
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[The Endgame: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq, from George W. Bush to Barack Obama]]> 13129591 Ěý
Prodigiously researched, The Endgame is not only based on an abundance of highly classified, still-secret government documents but is also brilliantly informed by access to key figures in the White House, the military, the State and Defense departments, the intelligence community, and, most strikingly, by extensive interviews with both Sunni and Shiite leaders, key Kurdish politicians, tribal sheikhs, former insurgents, Sadrists, and senior Iraqi military officers, whose insights about critical turning points and previously unknown decisions made during the war have heretofore been conspicuously missing from the media’s coverage of it.
Ěý
The Endgame is riveting as a blow-by-blow chronicle of the fighting. It is also relentlessly revealing, as it deftly pieces together the puzzle of the prosecution of American, Iraqi, and Iranian objectives, and the diplomatic intrigue and political struggle within Iraq since the American invasion.]]> 800 Michael R. Gordon 0307377229 Evan 5 4.22 2012 The Endgame: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq, from George W. Bush to Barack Obama
author: Michael R. Gordon
name: Evan
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2012
rating: 5
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date added: 2013/07/17
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]]> <![CDATA[The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements]]> 15916 177 Eric Hoffer 0060505915 Evan 5 4.18 1951 The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
author: Eric Hoffer
name: Evan
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1951
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/05/19
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I'm a true believer in Hoffer.
]]> ABC of Reading 145108 210 Ezra Pound 0811201511 Evan 5 3.91 1934 ABC of Reading
author: Ezra Pound
name: Evan
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1934
rating: 5
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date added: 2011/10/28
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]]> Bunker Archeology 198033 215 Paul Virilio 1568980159 Evan 5 4.17 1975 Bunker Archeology
author: Paul Virilio
name: Evan
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1975
rating: 5
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date added: 2011/03/15
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]]> Martini: A Memoir 1016867 240 Frank Moorhouse 1740513126 Evan 0
Charter 8 was an open letter to the Communist Party leaders of China calling for press freedom and democratic reform. Liu was arrested on December 8, 2008 and later sentenced to 11 years in prison by the government of China.

Frank Moorhouse is an Australian author who has spoken out against the imprisonment of Liu and the overall suppression of free speech in China. His refusal to tour China was done, he says, to draw attention to its government's oppression of its citizens.

I ordered Moorhouse's memoir today, curious to read about his life. Am always interested in people who make unusual moral choices.

Moorhouse wrote the screenplay for the 1985 film, The Coca-Cola Kid, a kind of brilliant small picture starring Eric Roberts before he lost his mind and who is terrific in it. Awesome script.



]]> 4.04 2005 Martini: A Memoir
author: Frank Moorhouse
name: Evan
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2010/01/30
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I became interested in this author after reading in the news today that he is boycotting a literary tour in China to protest the Communist government's imprisonment of Liu Xiaobo, lead organizer of the "Charter 8" petition and manifesto. Liu has also been a literary critic and guest lecturer at Columbia University.

Charter 8 was an open letter to the Communist Party leaders of China calling for press freedom and democratic reform. Liu was arrested on December 8, 2008 and later sentenced to 11 years in prison by the government of China.

Frank Moorhouse is an Australian author who has spoken out against the imprisonment of Liu and the overall suppression of free speech in China. His refusal to tour China was done, he says, to draw attention to its government's oppression of its citizens.

I ordered Moorhouse's memoir today, curious to read about his life. Am always interested in people who make unusual moral choices.

Moorhouse wrote the screenplay for the 1985 film, The Coca-Cola Kid, a kind of brilliant small picture starring Eric Roberts before he lost his mind and who is terrific in it. Awesome script.




]]> <![CDATA[United States: Essays 1952-1992]]> 88868 United States offers an incomparably rich tapestry of American intellectual and political life in a tumultuous period. It also provides the best, most sustained exposure possible to the most wide-ranging, acute, and original literary intelligence of the post�World War II years. United States is an essential book in the canon of twentieth-century American literature and an endlessly fascinating work.]]> 1295 Gore Vidal 0767908066 Evan 5
In 2005 I received a PEN award at a function at which he was also honored. At the awards dinner, attendees were each given a bag of books, mine and his and a bunch of others. After the torture of long speeches and even longer video presentations (why do they always have long video presentations at dinners for writers. Isn't video an insult to our craft?) I grabbed my free Vidal book and approached him, with my then 14-year-old nephew in tow, to ask for his autograph. I thought it would be cool for my nephew to meet him. Vidal signed our books, but had no interest in small talk. Rude, but in a dignified way. Made him a appealing.

When I arrived home that night I cracked open United States, expecting to find four decades--toughly a thousands pages!--of predictable, curmudgeon opinions, as I knew Vidal from him public persona. From the earliest section of essays I was stunned. Vidal is such an astonishing and original thinker and observer in these. Beautiful prose and arguments. Such breadth of subjects and commensurate breadth of experience and thought bearing on them. Among my favorites are his essays on John Adams and John Quincy--second and sixth Presidents--H.L. Mencken and Watergate spook E. Howard Hunt. Vidal writing on Mencken is one the greatest reading pleasures I have had in the past few years. Vidal is certainly up there with Mencken as an American essayist. As far as I'm concerned, there is no greater compliment.

I have concluded there are at least two Vidals: Man of letters and media whore. The former is the one who matters.








]]> 4.38 1993 United States: Essays 1952-1992
author: Gore Vidal
name: Evan
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1993
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/11/07
shelves:
review:
Every year or so for at least the past decade a Vidal interview appears in print or on TV in which he makes grand, outrageous comments about how lame the United States is and also how stupid most of the public discourse about it remains. In his latest, he referred to the 13-year-old rape victim of Roman Polanski as a "hooker." In the public pronouncements he struck me as a clown curmudgeon. Worse, his public opinions are so predictable. Was it any surprise that he would characterize Bush as an idiot fascist? Of course not.

In 2005 I received a PEN award at a function at which he was also honored. At the awards dinner, attendees were each given a bag of books, mine and his and a bunch of others. After the torture of long speeches and even longer video presentations (why do they always have long video presentations at dinners for writers. Isn't video an insult to our craft?) I grabbed my free Vidal book and approached him, with my then 14-year-old nephew in tow, to ask for his autograph. I thought it would be cool for my nephew to meet him. Vidal signed our books, but had no interest in small talk. Rude, but in a dignified way. Made him a appealing.

When I arrived home that night I cracked open United States, expecting to find four decades--toughly a thousands pages!--of predictable, curmudgeon opinions, as I knew Vidal from him public persona. From the earliest section of essays I was stunned. Vidal is such an astonishing and original thinker and observer in these. Beautiful prose and arguments. Such breadth of subjects and commensurate breadth of experience and thought bearing on them. Among my favorites are his essays on John Adams and John Quincy--second and sixth Presidents--H.L. Mencken and Watergate spook E. Howard Hunt. Vidal writing on Mencken is one the greatest reading pleasures I have had in the past few years. Vidal is certainly up there with Mencken as an American essayist. As far as I'm concerned, there is no greater compliment.

I have concluded there are at least two Vidals: Man of letters and media whore. The former is the one who matters.









]]> More Die of Heartbreak 133608 336 Saul Bellow 0385318774 Evan 0 3.77 1987 More Die of Heartbreak
author: Saul Bellow
name: Evan
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/10/14
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Blood's a Rover (Underworld USA, #3)]]> 6094181 Ěý
Martin Luther King assassinated. Robert Kennedy assassinated. Los Angeles, 1968. Conspiracies theories are taking hold. On the horizon looms the Democratic Convention in Chicago and constant gun fire peppers south L.A. Violence, greed, and grime, are replacing free-love and everybody from Howard Hughes, Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover to the right-wing assassins and left-wing revolutionaries are getting dirty. At the center of it all is a triumvirate: the president’s strong-arm goon, an ex-cop and heroine runner, and a private eye whose quarry is so dangerous she could set off the whole powder keg. With his trademark deadly staccato prose, James Ellroy holds nothing back in this wild, startling and much anticipated conclusion to his Underworld USA trilogy.
Ěý


From the Trade Paperback edition.]]> 656 James Ellroy 0679403930 Evan 5
Blood's a Rover concludes the trilogy that began with American Tabloid, one of his best works and an amazing alternate history of America. I have been waiting for the final installment for a decade. Two hundred pages in, Rover does not disappoint. But I write as a total Ellroy fan. As with several of his books, I will probably have to reread this. So many characters, I won't get a fluid read until the second go around. For me one of the draws to his work is the complexity, so Rover is a good one so far. Possibly great.

David (Comment #4) might actually like Rover, given his comment that good fiction is not pleasurable. Probably the toughest Ellroy book for me to follow. Very diffuse scenes, characters.

For me, good fiction pulls me into a sort of trance, in which it achieves union with my consciousness and perhaps bends the way I perceive the world long after I have put the book down. Ellroy's work typically achieves this. Through parts of Rover I was so lost, it did not work for me. I had to keep flipping back through the pages to recall who the characters were, what they were up to. Disconcerting. Like watching a foreign movie with so many subtitles you can't follow visuals.

The first time I read White Jazz, I had trouble following the names and locations, and was only able to get properly lost in the flow of the book on a second reading. I will read Rover again after I get the proper hardcover edition.

I disagree with David's comment that all readers slavishly follow Ellroy simply because he is a big name. I resisted readlng him at first because so many people raved about him. Thought he must be a fad. I was wrong. He is a big name in my mind at least because he has written some mighty books. That said, I do agree with David's general idea. Many big name authors are, of course, garbage.
]]> 3.93 2009 Blood's a Rover (Underworld USA, #3)
author: James Ellroy
name: Evan
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2009/06/25
date added: 2009/07/29
shelves:
review:
I am reading the advance copy. I have devoured all of Ellroy's work, have heard him read and love the manic rhythm of his language. I totally believe when Ellroy is at his best, his work transcends genre, and he is writing Great American Novels.

Blood's a Rover concludes the trilogy that began with American Tabloid, one of his best works and an amazing alternate history of America. I have been waiting for the final installment for a decade. Two hundred pages in, Rover does not disappoint. But I write as a total Ellroy fan. As with several of his books, I will probably have to reread this. So many characters, I won't get a fluid read until the second go around. For me one of the draws to his work is the complexity, so Rover is a good one so far. Possibly great.

David (Comment #4) might actually like Rover, given his comment that good fiction is not pleasurable. Probably the toughest Ellroy book for me to follow. Very diffuse scenes, characters.

For me, good fiction pulls me into a sort of trance, in which it achieves union with my consciousness and perhaps bends the way I perceive the world long after I have put the book down. Ellroy's work typically achieves this. Through parts of Rover I was so lost, it did not work for me. I had to keep flipping back through the pages to recall who the characters were, what they were up to. Disconcerting. Like watching a foreign movie with so many subtitles you can't follow visuals.

The first time I read White Jazz, I had trouble following the names and locations, and was only able to get properly lost in the flow of the book on a second reading. I will read Rover again after I get the proper hardcover edition.

I disagree with David's comment that all readers slavishly follow Ellroy simply because he is a big name. I resisted readlng him at first because so many people raved about him. Thought he must be a fad. I was wrong. He is a big name in my mind at least because he has written some mighty books. That said, I do agree with David's general idea. Many big name authors are, of course, garbage.

]]> <![CDATA[Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal]]> 1097
Schlosser's myth-shattering survey stretches from California's subdivisions where the business was born to the industrial corridor along the New Jersey Turnpike where many fast food's flavors are concocted. Along the way, he unearths a trove of fascinating, unsettling truths -- from the unholy alliance between fast food and Hollywood to the seismic changes the industry has wrought in food production, popular culture, and even real estate.
(back cover)]]> 383 Eric Schlosser 0060838582 Evan 5 3.75 2001 Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
author: Eric Schlosser
name: Evan
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/06/02
shelves:
review:
Schlosser is such an astonishingly great reporter and writer. When I read this I was struck by his ability to build narrative out of dense, detailed reporting. When this book came out I was lucky enough to hear Schlosser read at the (now closed) Dutton's Books in Brentwood. I knew nothing about him or the book when I showed up. But his reading had the energy of a religious awakening. I think this came more from the crowd, than from Schlosser who was almost cryptically self-effacing in his delivery. I read the book both as a reporter, trying to figure out his methods and as a fan. One of the lines that struck me was his account of Disney teaming with McDonald's meaning, as Schlosser wrote (quoting from memory), 'It is now possible to get a Happy Meal at the happiest place on earth.' This line, so true but also sly and damning, is one of the great moments of the book. A few years later when I wrote about American troops' dismay at learning there are no McDonald's in Kandahar (in a story for Rolling Stone, now included in Hella Nation) I was able to pay small personal homage to Schlosser when I wrote, "The soldiers stare at the sergeant while the news sinks in: There are no Happy Meals in Afghanistan." I look forward to reading Schlosser's upcoming book on prisons.
]]> Pain Killers 4032554 408 Jerry Stahl 0060506652 Evan 5
]]> 3.45 2009 Pain Killers
author: Jerry Stahl
name: Evan
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2009/05/02
date added: 2009/05/08
shelves:
review:
I heard Jerry read from this book at an event in Los Angeles. His reading just blew me away, and I bought the book. Reading it the past few days has been the highlight of my week. The book totally delivered. Withering satire. Among my favorite passages: Nazi war criminal Dr. Mengele comparing himself to Jerry Lewis.


]]> <![CDATA[Naples '44: A World War II Diary of Occupied Italy]]> 644434 From the author Graham Greene called "one of our best writers, not of any particular decade but of our century," comes a masterpiece about a war-ravaged city under occupation
As a young intelligence officer stationed in Naples following its liberation from Nazi forces, Norman Lewis recorded the lives of a proud and vibrant people forced to survive on prostitution, thievery, and a desperate belief in miracles and cures. The most popular of Lewis's twenty-seven books, Naples '44 is a landmark poetic study of the agony of wartime occupation and its ability to bring out the worst, and often the best, in human nature. In prose both heartrending and comic, Lewis describes an era of disillusionment, escapism, and hysteria in which the Allied occupiers mete out justice unfairly and fail to provide basic necessities to the populace while Neapolitan citizens accuse each other of being Nazi spies, women offer their bodies to the same Allied soldiers whose supplies they steal for sale on the black market, and angry young men organize militias to oppose "temporary" foreign rule. Yet over the chaotic din, Lewis sings intimately of the essential dignity of the Neapolitan people, whose traditions of civility, courage, and generosity of spirit shine through on a daily basis. This essential World War II book is as timely a read as ever.
"Norman Lewis is one of the greatest twentieth-century British writers and Naples '44 is his masterpiece. A lyrical, ironic, and detached account of a tempestuous, byzantine, and opaque city in the aftermath of war."--Will Self
]]> 191 Norman Lewis 0786714387 Evan 5 4.26 1978 Naples '44: A World War II Diary of Occupied Italy
author: Norman Lewis
name: Evan
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1978
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/05/06
shelves:
review:
Read this in college. At the time, I found the author's dispassionate account of a society crushed under war almost too disturbing to read. When I spent time in Cuba in the mid-1990's there were interesting parallels to WWII Naples, and the experience of having read this book helped me to understand Cuba a bit better. Ditto when I spent time in Afghanistan and Iraq. Though we tend to focus most attention on the warriors, the horrors of war often land hardest on civilians. Naples '44 offers invaluable, though unsettling, insight into how people and social organisms behave in the crucible of war.
]]> <![CDATA[The Complete Peanuts, 1967-1968 (The Complete Peanuts, #9)]]> 54591
Still, Snoopy looms large, so this volume (a particularly Snoopy-heavy one) sees him arm-wrestling Lucy as the "Masked Marvel" and then taking off for Petaluma for the national arm-wrestling championship; impersonating a vulture and a "Cheshire Beagle"; enjoying golf and hockey; attempting a jaunt to France for an ice-skating championship; running for office on the "Paw" ticket; being traded to Peppermint Patty's baseball team, then un-traded and installed as team manager by a guilt-ridden Charlie Brown; as well as dealing with the return of his original owner, Lila. If you're surprised by that last one, imagine how Charlie Brown feels...

Lila makes only a brief appearance (as does José Peterson, a short-lived � and short � star member of Charlie Brown's baseball team), but this volume sees the appearance of what would be Schulz's most controversial major character: Franklin. (Yes, in 1968 the introduction of a black character caused a stir.) Peppermint Patty, working toward her ascendancy as one of the major Peanuts players in the 1970s and 1980s, also has several major turns, including a storyline in which she’s the tent monitor for three little girls (who call her "Sir" � a joke Schulz would pick up later with Peppermint Patty's friend Marcie).

Stories involving other characters include a sequence in which Linus's flippant comment to his Gramma that he'll kick his blanket habit when she kicks her smoking habit backfires; Lucy bullies Linus, pesters Schroeder, and organizes a "crab-in"; plus Charlie Brown copes with Valentine's Day depression, the Little Red-Haired Girl, the increasingly malevolent kite-eating tree, and baseball losses. In other words: Vintage Peanuts! All this, plus an introduction by beloved transgressive filmmaker John Waters and award-winning design by Seth. 730 black-and-white comic strips]]> 325 Charles M. Schulz 1560978260 Evan 5 4.60 2008 The Complete Peanuts, 1967-1968 (The Complete Peanuts, #9)
author: Charles M. Schulz
name: Evan
average rating: 4.60
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/05/06
shelves:
review:
This is better than psychotherapy and crack combined. I read these to keep my head on straight. Charlie Brown is so profoundly messed up. Snoopy rules.
]]> <![CDATA[Lost Crusade: America's Secret Cambodian Mercenaries (Special Warfare Series)]]> 1001664 Successfully blending intense combat narrative and stirring emotional drama, Scott vividly captures both the unique village culture of a little-known, highly spiritual people and their complex relationship with Special Forces soldiers, who found it increasingly difficult to match their charges' commitment to the costly conflict.
Building on his experiences as a Phoenix Program adviser near the Cambodian border, extensive interviews with Khmer Krom survivors, hundreds of hours of research in government archives, and requests for Freedom of Information Act disclosures, Scott seamlessly reconstructs the six-thousand-strong mercenary force's final crusade against communism, beginning in their ancestral home in 1970 and ending on the U.S. West Coast in 1995.]]> 194 Peter Scott 1557508461 Evan 5 4.36 1998 Lost Crusade: America's Secret Cambodian Mercenaries (Special Warfare Series)
author: Peter Scott
name: Evan
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1998
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/05/03
shelves:
review:
Peter Scott was one of my English teachers in high school. He had served in Vietnam in a Special Forces role, as a military adviser to ethnic Cambodians who lived in Vietnam. It was a robust form of advising that included combat. He spoke eloquently of this in class. When we read battle accounts in Shakespeare, Mr. Scott, as I knew him then, provided fascinating insights based on his own experience. He was an outstanding teacher. (I hope veterans of our more recent wars will consider teaching, as they have so much to offer.) I became aware of his book after I returned from Iraq and wrote Generation Kill. At the time I read it, the U.S. was attempting to transition from a direct combat role to one of advising in Iraq. Invaluable lessons on this in Scott's book. His book is also an amazing coming-of-age story, written with deep humility and self-deprecating sense of humor.
]]> Back Where I Came From 220475 289 A.J. Liebling 0865474257 Evan 5 4.08 1990 Back Where I Came From
author: A.J. Liebling
name: Evan
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1990
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/05/03
shelves:
review:
I was introduced to Liebling when I took a course at Columbia University called "Nonfiction Narrative Writing," taught by Kennedy Fraser, a New Yorker writer. This is the only graduate course in writing I ever took. Mostly, we just read Liebling. I do not write like him and could not, but his work is profoundly inspiring. I quote him in the forst chapter of my book, Hella Nation.
]]> The Setting Sun 194740
The story is told through the eyes of Kazuko, the unmarried daughter of a widowed aristocrat. Her search for self meaning in a society devoid of use for her forms the crux of Dazai’s novel. It is a sad story, and structurally is a novel very much within the confines of the Japanese take on the novel in a way reminiscent of authors such as Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata � the social interactions are peripheral and understated, nuances must be drawn, and for readers more used to Western novelistic forms this comes across as being rather wishy-washy.

Kazuko’s mother falls ill, and due to their financial circumstances they are forced to take a cottage in the countryside. Her brother, who became addicted to opium during the war is missing. When he returns, Kazuko attempts to form a liaison with the novelist Uehara. This romantic displacement only furthers to deepen her alienation from society.]]> 175 Osamu Dazai 0811200329 Evan 5 4.00 1947 The Setting Sun
author: Osamu Dazai
name: Evan
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1947
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/05/03
shelves:
review:
I read all of Dazai's books with intense hangovers, which I think is the proper way to read them. Setting Sun strikes me as his most perfectly formed novella. Achingly sad.
]]> Chump Change 177047 198 Dan Fante 0941543234 Evan 5

]]> 3.94 1996 Chump Change
author: Dan Fante
name: Evan
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1996
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/05/02
shelves:
review:
I have been friends with Dan for several years and read this in manuscript form. I think he perfectly captures LA and actually surpasses his father's book, Ask the Dust. In fact, the story of Ask the Dust has always struck me as a cliche. I know this is a heretical opinion, but there it is. It's my view critics have a tough time understanding Dan's work because it is so raw, and there is so much hero-worship of his father. I was friends with Dan before he showed me the manuscript. When he gave it to me, I had that dread you get when a friend hands you something. What if it sucks? But this book, and those that have followed have exceeded all expectation.



]]> <![CDATA[Roughing It : A Personal Narrative]]> 6398358 0 Mark Twain 1556904495 Evan 5 3.62 1872 Roughing It : A Personal Narrative
author: Mark Twain
name: Evan
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1872
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/04/26
shelves:
review:

]]> Life on the Mississippi 99152 The book that earned Mark Twain his first recognition as a serious writer...

Discover the magic of life on the Mississippi.

At once a romantic history of a mighty river, an autobiographical account of Mark Twain's early steamboat days, and a storehouse of humorous anecdotes and sketches, Life on the Mississippi is the raw material from which Twain wrote his finest novel: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn .

"The Lincoln of our literature." (William Dean Howells)]]> 384 Mark Twain 0451528174 Evan 5 3.86 1883 Life on the Mississippi
author: Mark Twain
name: Evan
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1883
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/04/26
shelves:
review:

]]> The Diaries of Adam and Eve 108202 Adam has a lot to learn about Eve, and even more from her, as she names the animals, discovers fire, and introduces all manner of innovations to their garden home. Mark Twain's "translation" of the diaries of the first man and woman offers a humorous "he said/she said" narrative of biblical events. The great American storyteller found comfort and inspiration in the company of women, and his irreverent look at conventional religion is also a thoughtful -- and humorous -- argument for gender equality.]]> 95 Mark Twain Evan 5 3.98 1906 The Diaries of Adam and Eve
author: Mark Twain
name: Evan
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1906
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/04/26
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings]]> 37813 321 Mark Twain 0060518650 Evan 5 4.22 1962 Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings
author: Mark Twain
name: Evan
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1962
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/04/26
shelves:
review:

]]> Pride and Prejudice 1885 Pride and Prejudice has remained one of the most popular novels in the English language. Jane Austen called this brilliant work "her own darling child" and its vivacious heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print." The romantic clash between the opinionated Elizabeth and her proud beau, Mr. Darcy, is a splendid performance of civilized sparring. And Jane Austen's radiant wit sparkles as her characters dance a delicate quadrille of flirtation and intrigue, making this book the most superb comedy of manners of Regency England.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780679783268]]> 279 Jane Austen 1441341706 Evan 5 4.28 1813 Pride and Prejudice
author: Jane Austen
name: Evan
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1813
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/04/25
shelves:
review:

]]> The White Album 421 The White Album records indelibly the upheavals and aftermaths of the 1960s. Examining key events, figures, and trends of the era—including Charles Manson, the Black Panthers, and the shopping mall—through the lens of her own spiritual confusion, Joan Didion helped to define mass culture as we now understand it. Written with a commanding sureness of tone and linguistic precision, The White Album is a central text of American reportage and a classic of American autobiography.]]> 224 Joan Didion 0374532079 Evan 5 4.05 1979 The White Album
author: Joan Didion
name: Evan
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1979
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/04/22
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review:

]]> Slouching Towards Bethlehem 424 The first nonfiction work by one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era, Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem remains, decades after its first publication, the essential portrait of America—particularly California—in the sixties.

It focuses on such subjects as John Wayne and Howard Hughes, growing up a girl in California, ruminating on the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room, and, especially, the essence of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, the heart of the counterculture.

It contains Didion's famous essay, "Goodbye to All That".]]> 238 Joan Didion Evan 5 4.20 1968 Slouching Towards Bethlehem
author: Joan Didion
name: Evan
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1968
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/04/22
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The End of the Battle (Sword of Honour, #3)]]> 600834 337 Evelyn Waugh 0316926205 Evan 5 4.06 1961 The End of the Battle (Sword of Honour, #3)
author: Evelyn Waugh
name: Evan
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1961
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/04/22
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Officers and Gentlemen (Sword of Honour, #2)]]> 328710 Officers and Gentlemen is the second novel in Waugh's brilliant Sword of Honor trilogy recording the tumultuous wartime adventures of Guy Crouchback, which also comprises Men at Arms and Unconditional Surrender.]]> 352 Evelyn Waugh 0316926302 Evan 5 3.95 1955 Officers and Gentlemen (Sword of Honour, #2)
author: Evelyn Waugh
name: Evan
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1955
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/04/22
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Men at Arms (Sword of Honour, #1)]]> 264121 256 Evelyn Waugh 0141185732 Evan 5 3.91 1952 Men at Arms (Sword of Honour, #1)
author: Evelyn Waugh
name: Evan
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1952
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/04/22
shelves:
review:

]]> Put Out More Flags 105187 304 Evelyn Waugh 0316916056 Evan 3 3.82 1942 Put Out More Flags
author: Evelyn Waugh
name: Evan
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1942
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2009/04/22
shelves:
review:

]]> Vile Bodies 142492 322 Evelyn Waugh 0316926116 Evan 4 3.75 1930 Vile Bodies
author: Evelyn Waugh
name: Evan
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1930
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2009/04/22
shelves:
review:

]]> Decline and Fall 30929 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Evelyn Waugh's first, funniest novel immediately caught the ear of the public with his account of an ingénu abroad in the decadent confusion of 1920s high society.]]> 300 Evelyn Waugh 1417920769 Evan 5 3.87 1928 Decline and Fall
author: Evelyn Waugh
name: Evan
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1928
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/04/22
shelves:
review:

]]> The Loved One 30935
A dark and savage satire on the Anglo-American cultural divide, The Loved One depicts a world where love, reputation, and death cost a very great deal.

This is an alternate cover edition: /book/show/3....]]> 127 Evelyn Waugh 0141184248 Evan 4 3.78 1948 The Loved One
author: Evelyn Waugh
name: Evan
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1948
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2009/04/22
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review:

]]> A Handful of Dust 531262 308 Evelyn Waugh 0316926051 Evan 4 3.91 1934 A Handful of Dust
author: Evelyn Waugh
name: Evan
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1934
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2009/04/22
shelves:
review:

]]> Brideshead Revisited 30933 Brideshead Revisited looks back to the golden age before the Second World War. It tells the story of Charles Ryder's infatuation with the Marchmains and the rapidly-disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by Sebastian at Oxford, then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to recognize only his spiritual and social distance from them.]]> 351 Evelyn Waugh 0316926345 Evan 5 4.01 1945 Brideshead Revisited
author: Evelyn Waugh
name: Evan
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1945
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/04/22
shelves:
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]]> South of No North 220680 South of No North contains some of Bukowski's best work. Among the short stories collected in the book are Love for $17.50, about a man named Robert whose infatuation with a mannequin in a junk shop leads him first to buy it, then make love to it, and then eventually fall in love with "her," much to the consternation of his real-life girlfriend; Maja Thurup, about a South American tribesman with an enormous penis who is brought to Los Angeles by the woman anthropologist who has "discovered" him and become his lover; and The Devil is Hot, about an encounter with Old Nick at an amusement pier in Santa Monica, where Scratch himself is caged and on display, fed only peanut butter and dogfood, exploited by a cynical carnie.

The collection also features two of Bukowski's finest and most famous short stories: All the Assholes in the World Plus Mine, an autobiographical rumination on the treatment of his hemorrhoids, and Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Live With Beasts. (The latter story originally was published as a chapbook of 500 copies by Bensenville Mimeo Press in 1965.)

The short stories collected in the volume are evocative of Bukowski at his best, when he was one of the premier short story writers still at the top of his talent.
- Wikipedia]]> 192 Charles Bukowski 0876851898 Evan 5 3.99 1973 South of No North
author: Charles Bukowski
name: Evan
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1973
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories]]> 50451
Bukowski's writings have addicted legions of American readers, even though the high literary establishment continues to ignore them. In Europe, however (particularly in Germany, Italy, and France, where he is published by the great publishing houses), Bukowski is critically recognized as one of America's greatest realist writers.]]> 240 Charles Bukowski 0872861562 Evan 5 3.99 1983 The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories
author: Charles Bukowski
name: Evan
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1983
rating: 5
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]]> Tales of Ordinary Madness 38503 Exceptional stories that came pounding out of Bukowski's violent and depraved life. Horrible and holy, you cannot read them and ever come away the same again.

With Bukowski, the votes are still coming in. There seems to be no middle ground—people seem either to love him or hate him. Tales of his own life and doings are as wild and weird as the very stories he writes. In a sense, Bukowski was a legend in his time: a madman, a recluse, a lover; tender, vicious; never the same.

From prostitutes to classical music, Bukowski ingeniously mixes high and low culture in his "tales of ordinary madness." These stories are humorous and haunting, angry yet tender portrayals of life in the underbelly of Los Angeles.]]> 238 Charles Bukowski 0872861554 Evan 4 4.01 1983 Tales of Ordinary Madness
author: Charles Bukowski
name: Evan
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1983
rating: 4
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]]> Factotum 497199
Charles Bukowski's posthumous legend continues to grow. Factotum is a masterfully vivid evocation of slow-paced, low-life urbanity and alcoholism, and an excellent introduction to the fictional world of Charles Bukowski.]]> 205 Charles Bukowski 0876852630 Evan 5 3.95 1975 Factotum
author: Charles Bukowski
name: Evan
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1975
rating: 5
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]]> Women 38500 291 Charles Bukowski 0061177598 Evan 4 3.85 1978 Women
author: Charles Bukowski
name: Evan
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1978
rating: 4
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]]> Ham on Rye 38501 288 Charles Bukowski 006117758X Evan 3 4.17 1982 Ham on Rye
author: Charles Bukowski
name: Evan
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1982
rating: 3
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]]> Post Office 51504 208 Charles Bukowski 0876850867 Evan 5 4.01 1971 Post Office
author: Charles Bukowski
name: Evan
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1971
rating: 5
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]]> Christopher and His Kind 16809 What most impressed the first readers of this memoir, however, was the candor with which he describes his life in gay Berlin of the 1930s and his struggles to save his companion, a German man named Heinz, from the Nazis. An engrossing and dramatic story and a fascinating glimpse into a little-known world, Christopher and His Kind remains one of Isherwood's greatest achievements.

A major figure in twentieth-century fiction and the gay rights movement, Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) is the author of Down There on a Visit, Lions and Shadows, A Meeting by the River, The Memorial, Prater Violet, A Single Man, and The World in the Evening, all available from the University of Minnesota Press.

]]> 352 Christopher Isherwood 0816638632 Evan 5 4.08 1976 Christopher and His Kind
author: Christopher Isherwood
name: Evan
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1976
rating: 5
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]]> The Berlin Stories 16810 The Last of Mr. Norris and Goodbye to Berlin, which make up The Berlin Stories are recognized today as classics of modern fiction.

A charming city of avenues and cafés, a grotesque city of night-people and fantasts, a dangerous city of vice and intrigue, a powerful city of millionaires and mobs - all this was Berlin in 1931, the period when Hitler was beginning his move to power.

Here are Mr. Norris, the improbable old debauchee mysteriously caught in the struggle between Nazis and Communists; plump Fräulein Schroeder, who thinks an operation to reduce the scale of her µţĂĽ˛őłŮ±đ might relieve her heart palpitations; the Landauers, a distinguished and doomed Jewish family; Sally Bowles, whose misadventures in the demimonde were popularized on the American stage and screen by Julie Harris in "I Am a Camera" and by Liza Minelli in "Cabaret."]]> 401 Christopher Isherwood 0811200701 Evan 5 4.04 1945 The Berlin Stories
author: Christopher Isherwood
name: Evan
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1945
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Down and Out in Paris and London]]> 393199 213 George Orwell 015626224X Evan 5 4.10 1933 Down and Out in Paris and London
author: George Orwell
name: Evan
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1933
rating: 5
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]]> Tree of Smoke 271074
Tree of Smoke was the 2007 National Book Award Winner for Fiction.]]> 614 Denis Johnson 0374279128 Evan 3 3.60 2004 Tree of Smoke
author: Denis Johnson
name: Evan
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2004
rating: 3
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]]> Jesus� Son 608287 Jesus' Son, the first collection of stories by Denis Johnson, presents a unique, hallucinatory vision of contemporary American life unmatched in power and immediacy and marks a new level of achievement for this acclaimed writer. In their intensity of perception, their neon-lit evocation of a strange world brought uncomfortably close to our own, the stories in Jesus' Son offer a disturbing yet eerily beautiful portrayal of American loneliness and hope.

Contains:
Car Crash While Hitchhiking
Two Men
Out on Bail
Dundun
Work
Emergency
Dirty Wedding
The Other Man
Happy Hour
Steady Hands at Seattle General
Beverly Home']]> 160 Denis Johnson 0060975776 Evan 5 4.16 1992 Jesus’ Son
author: Denis Johnson
name: Evan
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1992
rating: 5
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]]> West of Rome 90264 192 John Fante 0876856776 Evan 5 4.05 1985 West of Rome
author: John Fante
name: Evan
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1985
rating: 5
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]]> The Brotherhood of the Grape 90263 204 John Fante 1841956198 Evan 4 4.19 1977 The Brotherhood of the Grape
author: John Fante
name: Evan
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1977
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Ask the Dust (The Saga of Arturo Bandini, #3)]]> 46227 "Fante was my god." —Charles Bukowski, in his introduction to Ask the Dust

Arturo Bandini, a young, struggling Italian-American writer living in a seedy hotel in 1930s Los Angeles, falls hard for the elusive, mocking, unstable Camilla Lopez, a Mexican waitress. The pair embark on a strange and strained love-hate relationship, which slowly, but inexorably, descends into the realm of madness.

Ask the Dust is one of the truly great, yet unsung, American novels of the twentieth century. A tough and unsentimental story with a soft and tender heart, it remains as fresh and affecting as the day it was written.]]> 165 John Fante 0060822554 Evan 2 4.16 1939 Ask the Dust (The Saga of Arturo Bandini, #3)
author: John Fante
name: Evan
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1939
rating: 2
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]]> Spitting Off Tall Buildings 177050 He should fit right in. But if there's money for beer he's sure to mess things up.
A rut of deadbeat temping jobs follow. But Dante won't play office politics or kiss ass, so they don't last. Longer stints as the night manager of a run-down hotel, a window cleaner and, finally, a cabbie, are punctuated by whacked-out affairs, drinking binges and bouts of depression.]]> 160 Dan Fante 1841951900 Evan 4 3.81 2002 Spitting Off Tall Buildings
author: Dan Fante
name: Evan
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2002
rating: 4
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]]> Mooch 177046 240 Dan Fante 1841950696 Evan 5 4.04 2001 Mooch
author: Dan Fante
name: Evan
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2001
rating: 5
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]]> The Histories 1362
Here is the historian, investigating and judging what he has seen, heard, and read, and seeking out the true causes and consequences of the great deeds of the past. In his History , the war between the Greeks and Persians, the origins of their enmity, and all the more general features of the civilizations of the world of his day are seen as a unity and expressed as the vision of one man who as a child lived through the last of the great acts in this universal drama.

In Grene's remarkable translation and commentary, we see the historian as a storyteller, combining through his own narration the skeletal "historical" facts and the imaginative reality toward which his story reaches. Herodotus emerges in all his charm and complexity as a writer and the first historian in the Western tradition, perhaps unique in the way he has seen the interrelation of fact and fantasy.]]> 784 Herodotus 0140449086 Evan 5 3.98 -430 The Histories
author: Herodotus
name: Evan
average rating: 3.98
book published: -430
rating: 5
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]]> No Beast So Fierce 759799 320 Edward Bunker 1842430823 Evan 4 4.16 1973 No Beast So Fierce
author: Edward Bunker
name: Evan
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1973
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Suicide Hill (Lloyd Hopkins, #3)]]> 36063 280 James Ellroy 1400095301 Evan 3 3.51 1986 Suicide Hill (Lloyd Hopkins, #3)
author: James Ellroy
name: Evan
average rating: 3.51
book published: 1986
rating: 3
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]]> Destination: Morgue! 106342
Here are Mexican featherweights and unsolved-murder vics, crooked cops and a very clean D.A. Here is a profile of Hollywood’s latest celebrity perp-walker, Robert Blake, and three new novellas featuring a demented detective with an obsession with a Hollywood actress. And, oh yes, just maybe the last appearance of Hush-Hush sleaze-monger Danny Getchell. Here’s Ellroy himself, shining a 500-watt Mag light into all the dark places of his life and imagination. Morgue! puts the reader’s attention in a hammerlock and refuses to let go.]]> 389 James Ellroy 1400032873 Evan 3 3.32 2003 Destination: Morgue!
author: James Ellroy
name: Evan
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2003
rating: 3
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]]> <![CDATA[Blood on the Moon (Lloyd Hopkins, #1)]]> 21767
Now, there’s something haunting him. He sees a connection in a series of increasingly gruesome murders of women committed over a period of twenty years. To solve the case, Hopkins will dump all the rules and risk his career to make the final link and get the killer.]]> 262 James Ellroy 140009528X Evan 3 3.45 1984 Blood on the Moon (Lloyd Hopkins, #1)
author: James Ellroy
name: Evan
average rating: 3.45
book published: 1984
rating: 3
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]]> Hollywood Nocturnes 101008
Dig the swinging sax man's doing repos and plotting a kidnapping-of himself; a tommy gun is ripping apart windows, curtains, and bodies in High Darktown; a carhop at Scrivner's is keeping two extremely sweet sugar daddies, Howard Hughes and mobster Mickey Cohen, happy-until the scene turns murderous.

This is the hip-hop hard-edged world of L.A. 1950s cars with fins, Commies in closets, starmakers with come-ons, ex-cons with guns, and cops with mean streaks as wide as Sunset Strip.

James Ellroy's bizarre, stark tales dazzle us with their unexpected humor, raw brutality, and slightly lighter-than-usual noir realism. Hollywood Nocturnes is quintessential bluesy, black, and very, very hot.]]> 304 James Ellroy 0385333285 Evan 3 3.78 1993 Hollywood Nocturnes
author: James Ellroy
name: Evan
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1993
rating: 3
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]]> <![CDATA[Crime Wave: Reportage and Fiction from the Underside of L.A.]]> 36062
From the scandal sheets of the 1950s to this morning's police blotter, Ellroy reopens true crimes and restores human dimensions to their victims.ĚýĚýSublimely, he resurrects the rag Hush-Hush magazine.ĚýĚýAnd in a baroquely plotted novella of slaughter and corruption he enlists the forgotten luminaries of a lost Hollywood.ĚýĚýShocking, mesmerizing, and written in prose as wounding as an ice pick, Crime Wave is Ellroy at his best.]]> 288 James Ellroy 037570471X Evan 3 3.62 1999 Crime Wave: Reportage and Fiction from the Underside of L.A.
author: James Ellroy
name: Evan
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1999
rating: 3
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]]> Brown's Requiem 100998 248 James Ellroy 0380731770 Evan 3 3.53 1981 Brown's Requiem
author: James Ellroy
name: Evan
average rating: 3.53
book published: 1981
rating: 3
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]]> Clandestine 101004 328 James Ellroy 0380805294 Evan 3 3.71 1982 Clandestine
author: James Ellroy
name: Evan
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1982
rating: 3
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]]> Killer on the Road 36059 272 James Ellroy 038080896X Evan 3 3.66 1986 Killer on the Road
author: James Ellroy
name: Evan
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1986
rating: 3
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]]> <![CDATA[The Cold Six Thousand (Underworld USA #2)]]> 4191
In this savagely audacious novel, James Ellroy plants a pipe bomb under the America in the 1960s, lights the fuse, and watches the shrapnel fly. On November 22, 1963 three men converge in Dallas. Their to clean up the JFK hit’s loose ends and inconvenient witnesses. They are Wayne Tedrow, Jr., a Las Vegas cop with family ties to the lunatic right; Ward J. Littell, a defrocked FBI man turned underworld mouthpiece; and Pete Bondurant, a dope-runner and hit-man who serves as the mob’s emissary to the anti-Castro underground.

It goes bad from there. For the next five years these night-riders run a whirlwind of plots and Howard Hughes’s takeover of Vegas, J. Edgar Hoover’s war against the civil rights movement, the heroin trade in Vietnam, and the murders of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. Wilder than L. A. Confidential, more devastating than American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand establishes Ellroy as one of our most fearless novelists.]]> 688 James Ellroy 037572740X Evan 4 4.03 2001 The Cold Six Thousand (Underworld USA #2)
author: James Ellroy
name: Evan
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2001
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[The Big Nowhere (L.A. Quartet, #2)]]> 36058 472 James Ellroy 0099366614 Evan 5 4.09 1988 The Big Nowhere (L.A. Quartet, #2)
author: James Ellroy
name: Evan
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1988
rating: 5
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]]> White Jazz (L.A. Quartet, #4) 101000
Los Angeles, 1958. Killings, beatings, bribes, shakedowns--it's standard procedure for Lieutenant Dave Klein, LAPD. He's a slumlord, a bagman, an enforcer--a power in his own small corner of hell. Then the Feds announce a full-out investigation into local police corruption, and everything goes haywire.

Klein's been hung out as bait, "a bad cop to draw the heat," and the heat's coming from all from local politicians, from LAPD brass, from racketeers and drug kingpins--all of them hell-bent on keeping their own secrets hidden. For Klein, "forty-two and going on dead," it's dues time.

Klein tells his own story--his voice clipped, sharp, often as brutal as the events he's describing--taking us with him on a journey through a world shaped by monstrous ambition, avarice, and perversion. It's a world he created, but now he'll do anything to get out of it alive.

Fierce, riveting, and honed to a razor edge, White Jazz is crime fiction at its most shattering.]]> 354 James Ellroy 0375727361 Evan 4 3.93 1992 White Jazz (L.A. Quartet, #4)
author: James Ellroy
name: Evan
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1992
rating: 4
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]]> My Dark Places 36061 L.A. Confidential comes My Dark Places, an investigative autobiography by James Ellroy. In 1958, Ellroy's mother, Jean, was raped, killed, and dumped off a road in El Monte, California, a rundown L.A. suburb. The killer was never found, and the case was closed. It was a sordid, back-page homicide that no one remembered. Except her son.

James Ellroy was ten years old when his mother died. His bereavement was complex and ambiguous: "I cried. I cranked tears out all the way to L.A. I hated her. I hated El Monte. Some unknown killer just bought me a brand-new beautiful life." He grew up obsessed with murdered women and crime. He ran from his mother's ghost.

Ellroy became a writer of radically provocative and bestselling crime novels. "I wear obsession well," he says. "I've turned it into something." He tried to reclaim his mother through fiction. It didn't work. He quit running and wrote this memoir.

My Dark Places is Jean and James Ellroy's story—from 1958 to all points past and up to this moment. It is the story of a brilliant homicide detective named Bill Stoner and of the investigation he and Ellroy undertook. It is also an unflinching autobiography with vivid reportage. This is James Ellroy's journey through his most forbidding memories.]]> 427 James Ellroy 0517288990 Evan 4 3.86 1996 My Dark Places
author: James Ellroy
name: Evan
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1996
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[American Tabloid (Underworld USA #1)]]> 36064
Where the CIA, the Mob, J. Edgar Hoover, Howard Hughes, Jimmy Hoffa, Cuban political exiles, and various loose cannons conspire in a covert anarchy...

Where the right drugs, the right amount of cash, the right murder, buys a moment of a man's loyalty...

Where three renegade law-enforcement officers—a former L.A. cop and two FBI agents—are shaping events with the virulence of their greed and hatred, riding full-blast shotgun into history....

James Ellroy's trademark nothing-spared rendering of reality, blistering language, and relentless narrative pace are here in electrifying abundance, put to work in a novel as shocking and daring as anything he's written: a secret history that zeroes in on a time still shrouded in secrets and blows it wide open.

Chosen by Time magazine as one of the ten best books of the year.

"Hard-bitten ... ingenious ... Ellroy segues into political intrigue without missing a beat." �The New York Times

"Vastly entertaining." �Los Angeles Times

"One hellishly exciting ride." �Detroit Free Press

"A supremely controlled work of art." �The New York Times Book Review]]> 592 James Ellroy 037572737X Evan 5 4.21 1995 American Tabloid (Underworld USA #1)
author: James Ellroy
name: Evan
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1995
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[L.A. Confidential (L.A. Quartet, #3)]]> 57727 496 James Ellroy Evan 5 4.21 1990 L.A. Confidential (L.A. Quartet, #3)
author: James Ellroy
name: Evan
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1990
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[The Black Dahlia (L.A. Quartet, #1)]]> 21704 348 James Ellroy 0446698873 Evan 5 3.77 1987 The Black Dahlia (L.A. Quartet, #1)
author: James Ellroy
name: Evan
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1987
rating: 5
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]]> Doom Fox 550337 Doom Fox is the last in Iceberg Slim's legendary series of underground novels. Written in 1978 and unpublished until now, Doom Fox is a tale of the Los Angeles ghetto that begins just after World War II and spans the next thirty years. In the no-holds-barred tradition of Chester Himes, Doom Fox captures a violent, vivid world of low-riding chippie-catchers, prizefighters, prostitutes, and smooth-talking preachers.]]> 224 Iceberg Slim 0802135889 Evan 3 3.87 1998 Doom Fox
author: Iceberg Slim
name: Evan
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1998
rating: 3
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]]> Death Wish 1968772 288 Iceberg Slim 0870679783 Evan 3 3.92 1977 Death Wish
author: Iceberg Slim
name: Evan
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1977
rating: 3
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]]> Airtight Willie & Me 355746 Robert Beck.
For more than two decades, Beck, writing as Iceberg Slim has fascinated or horrified readers of his books and stories. Beck doesn't create superflies ans superhos; he gives the reader real live people- people with hopes and fears who cough, breath and bleed and who have grabbed the only ticket they can find out of misery but the ticket is often a one way trip into hell and suffering.
This anthology of stories by Beck is a monument to the courage of the people of the streets. Some of them make it; most don't. Laugh along with them; cry when they cry; hurt when life turns against them.]]> 224 Iceberg Slim 0870679325 Evan 3 3.90 1981 Airtight Willie & Me
author: Iceberg Slim
name: Evan
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1981
rating: 3
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]]> Long White Con 550336 224 Iceberg Slim 0870679309 Evan 5 4.02 1988 Long White Con
author: Iceberg Slim
name: Evan
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1988
rating: 5
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]]> Trick Baby 355742 312 Iceberg Slim 0870679333 Evan 3 4.12 1969 Trick Baby
author: Iceberg Slim
name: Evan
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1969
rating: 3
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]]> Pimp: The Story of My Life 108713 311 Iceberg Slim 0862415934 Evan 3 4.00 1967 Pimp: The Story of My Life
author: Iceberg Slim
name: Evan
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1967
rating: 3
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]]> The Joy Luck Club 7763 Alternate cover editions of ISBN 9780143038092 can be found here.

Four mothers, four daughters, four families, whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's telling the stories. In 1949, four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, meet weekly to play mahjong and tell stories of what they left behind in China. United in loss and new hope for their daughters' futures, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Their daughters, who have never heard these stories, think their mothers' advice is irrelevant to their modern American lives � until their own inner crises reveal how much they've unknowingly inherited of their mothers' pasts.

With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of their matriarchal ties. Tan is an astute storyteller, enticing readers to immerse themselves into these lives of complexity and mystery.]]> 288 Amy Tan Evan 3 3.96 1989 The Joy Luck Club
author: Amy Tan
name: Evan
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1989
rating: 3
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]]> Lolita 7604 Librarian's note: Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780141182537.

Humbert Humbert - scholar, aesthete and romantic - has fallen completely and utterly in love with Dolores Haze, his landlady's gum-snapping, silky skinned twelve-year-old daughter. Reluctantly agreeing to marry Mrs Haze just to be close to Lolita, Humbert suffers greatly in the pursuit of romance; but when Lo herself starts looking for attention elsewhere, he will carry her off on a desperate cross-country misadventure, all in the name of Love. Hilarious, flamboyant, heart-breaking and full of ingenious word play, Lolita is an immaculate, unforgettable masterpiece of obsession, delusion and lust.]]> 368 Vladimir Nabokov 0679723161 Evan 5 3.87 1955 Lolita
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Evan
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1955
rating: 5
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]]> Moby-Dick or, The Whale 153747 "It is the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships' cables and hawsers. A Polar wind blows through it, and birds of prey hover over it."

So Melville wrote of his masterpiece, one of the greatest works of imagination in literary history. In part, Moby-Dick is the story of an eerily compelling madman pursuing an unholy war against a creature as vast and dangerous and unknowable as the sea itself. But more than just a novel of adventure, more than an encyclopaedia of whaling lore and legend, the book can be seen as part of its author's lifelong meditation on America. Written with wonderfully redemptive humour, Moby-Dick is also a profound inquiry into character, faith, and the nature of perception.

This edition of Moby-Dick, which reproduces the definitive text of the novel, includes invaluable explanatory notes, along with maps, illustrations, and a glossary of nautical terms.]]> 720 Herman Melville 0142437247 Evan 5 3.53 1851 Moby-Dick or, The Whale
author: Herman Melville
name: Evan
average rating: 3.53
book published: 1851
rating: 5
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]]>